1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a device for serving a hot food product.
2. Description of the Related Art
In serving, for example, hot pizza pie at a commercial establishment, the server may employ a knife to cut a slice from the pizza pie and then a spatula to remove this slice from the pie. There is the risk of the pizza slice falling from the spatula and to ensure against this the server might employ a second implement or may touch the pizza slice. There is also the risk of contamination due to the server being too close to the slice.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,890,549 to Steiner et al. issued Jan. 2, 1990 discloses an implement which may be used in the serving of pizza pie slices. The implement has a food support surface and a food gripper resiliently joined to one end of the food support surface. The implement may be employed by a user placing his fingers under the food support surface and using his thumb to position the food gripper over the food support surface. The food support surface may then be slid under a pizza slice and the implement used in a pincer-like fashion to grip the pizza slice. The implement further includes a serrated edge along the food support surface to facilitate cutting a pizza slice from a pizza pie. This implement suffers a drawback that the user's hand is in close proximity to the pizza slice presenting the possibility of direct contact with the slice or contaminating the slice due to contaminants falling from the user. Furthermore, due to the proximity of the user's hand to the slice, this implement has no utility in a commercial setting where piping hot slices are dispensed from a metal tray just after the tray has been removed from a pizza oven. Yet further, the implement of Steiner could not be modified for use in a commercial setting by the addition of insulation since insulated materials are generally impermissible in commercial food serving implements. Indeed, commercially used implements must generally be constructed from stainless steel.
Accordingly, this invention seeks to overcome drawbacks of known hot food serving devices.